How to Hire the Right Restaurant Employees

Restaurant employees can make or break a food establishment depending on their experience and work ethic. As a manager, you can make the hiring process transparent for yourself by realizing a few important issues and accepting some hard truths:

Do not take the high turnover literally. The restaurant business is notorious for its high turnover rates so you need to prepare yourself mentally to lose a few employees regularly. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should resign yourself to the fact. You can motivate your employees to remain for longer periods of time.

However, not every candidate will show a propensity for this. During the hiring process, weed out those who are just looking for a job till their next one and choose those who are passionate about the industry. That way you will have motivated team members who will be more willing to stay on.

Look to star performers. Before starting the hiring process, imagine what your ideal employee is like. An easy way to do this is to think about your star performers and their work ethic. This includes those who work in the front and back of the house and who stand out because of their enthusiasm.

Whether they go the extra mile to make customers feel happy or stay back to take inventory of the sock or takeover shifts for unavailable workers, focus on finding those qualities in new recruits. Avoid hiring those who lack the work ethic to match at least some of those characteristics.

Check their background in food service. Prioritize candidates who have experience working in the food industry. They realize the needs of the industry and the flexibility required to ensure smooth operations.

For instance, someone who has worked in the kitchen as well as front of the house can be a better asset than someone who has just worked as a server. The bottom line is that staff members who have worn a number of hats throughout their career will be more efficient and invaluable additions to the team.

Develop efficient interview questions. Before an interview, create a list of questions that can help you uncover whether candidates share your views and values regarding the restaurant. Passionate workers may be hard workers, but they may have their own ideas on how to run things if they are ambitious as well.

While that quality can be valuable, it can also get frustrating especially if it interferes with your daily work. By creating a list of questions beforehand, you can eliminate haphazard interviews and keep the experience objective.

A good way to do this is to list all of the essential skills you need in an employee. This can be anything from good communication skills to solving customer complaints efficiently. The answers will give you an idea of the skill set of each candidate and help you make an informed decision.

Look past the resume. Someone who hasn’t had experience in the food industry but has a positive attitude may be a better hire than an experienced worker who is not motivated. A good attitude cannot be taught and a bad one can cost you more than an employee.

Most candidates learn on the job anyway and an enthusiastic one might leave more experienced workers behind in the long run. To mitigate risk hire them for a low salary at first and allow them to make efforts for a better one. An interview can help you root out genuinely positive workers if you have the questions for it.

Put yourself in the spotlight. The interview process will tell you a lot about the candidates but also about yourself. A good way to root out people who have good communication skills is to tell them to ask you questions about the work.

This will allow the candidates to get a better understanding of what they are getting into and what you are like to work with. However, if they ask when they can take days off or when they get off at the end of the day, cross them off the list.

Food and Beverage Programs

Whether you are looking for new employees or not, you need to get certified as a food handler to be a manager at a restaurant. 360Training.com offers food and beverage handling training courses that can help you acquire your certification. Sign up for a course today.

Rudy Dunbar is one of our Food and Beverage Enterprise Sales Executives. He is focused on helping hospitality and retail groups with industry-specific compliance training ranging from food/alcohol safety compliance to HR related solutions. Rudy has worked in all aspects of the industry from cooking in professional kitchens to managing bars and restaurants. Following that he transitioned to food tech solutions that help independent and corporate hospitality groups succeed.